Berlin’de DGAP Konferansı (İng.)

CONTRIBUTIONS OF DR. OYMEN AT DGAP – 31 MAY 2005

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,

First I would like to say a few words about strategic perceptions of Turkey before expressing my views on Turkish-American and Turkish-European defense cooperation. Actually we are living the longest period of peace of our history. In fact, we have not engaged in a war in the real sense of the term in the last 83 years and Turkey is the only country in the region, which lived in peace throughout this period and among very few European countries, which managed to escape Second World War.

One of the main reasons of this is the fact that Turkey has pursued a policy of peace since the foundation of the Republic in 1923. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s motto was “Peace at home, peace abroad”. After commanding a number of fronts during the First World War, Atatürk concluded, “War is a crime unless it is fought to repel an aggression for homeland”.

Following this policy Turkey strongly resisted the efforts of Roosevelt and Churchill to engage her in the Second World War. Turkey tried to follow the policy of good neighborhood with all countries of the region starting with Greece, against whom we waged our War of Independence in early 1920s.

To conduct a policy of peace is important but not enough. Unless you have enough deterrent power against possible aggressors, you cannot avoid military confrontations. Therefore Turkey attached a high importance to upgrade its military strength throughout the Republican era. This was one of the purposes of joining NATO in 1952. During the Cold War years Turkey was at the same time a provider and a beneficiary of security in the NATO. We brought our contribution to the alliance by keeping a great number of Soviet divisions close to our border areas. We also profited from high quality sophisticated weapon systems that we procured from the US and some other NATO countries. In the meantime we develop our own defense industries. Today Turkey is among few countries, which are able to produce sophisticated aircraft like F-16, frigates and submarines.

After the end of the Cold War, a new security environment has emerged. Turkey continued to believe that NATO has not lost its relevance and importance after the end of the Cold War. Since new risks and threats emerged NATO should adopt itself to these new conditions and revise its strategic concept.  It is what we did in the Washington Summit of 1999. The New Strategic Concept permits the alliance to operate outside the borders of the member countries for crisis management. NATO conducted successful operations in Bosnia and Kosovo. NATO had also positive contributions in bringing stability to Macedonia and providing security to Kabul and its airport.

Turkey has played an important role in all these operations and assumed command responsibilities in Afghanistan. We supported NATO’s enlargement process and the creation of the NATO-Russia Council, which created a unique partnership between the alliance and its former enemy. Partnership for Peace and Mediterranean Dialogue were also positive achievements that Turkey fully participated. Turkey has also established a PfP training center in Ankara to contribute the military standards and training of the officers of the partner countries.

All these are positive developments but we have to address also to some shortcomings and problems. It is generally agreed that what is missing in NATO is the capabilities that we need to cope with new threats like terrorism, proliferation of the weapons of mass destruction, cyber-terrorism, etc. But we believe that the lack capabilities represent only one side of the problem. The other side is the willingness to combat terrorism and other threats with the spirit of full cooperation and solidarity. On this point, we notice some shortcomings and difficulties.

To start with terrorism, Turkey was among the allies who argued that NATO should play a more active role in combating terrorism and we always urged stronger cooperation among member countries. To tell you the truth there was no unanimity within the alliance to combat terrorism a priority among the major tasks of NATO. The terrorist attacks to Twin Towers and Pentagon on 11th of September 2001 has changed completely this approach, and NATO has declared an Article 5 situation for the first time in history to help Americans to combat terrorist threats. We fully supported the American approach to combat all terrorist organizations throughout the world irrespective of their instigators and targets. We appreciated the decision of the American administration to include in her list of terrorist organization PKK and other terrorist groups who attacked Turkish targets for two decades. But what happened after the American military operation against Iraq was a surprise for us. Indeed, American failed to neutralize 5000 terrorist located in Northern Iraq and served in this geography as a logistic base for their attack against Turkey. So far we have not received a convincing explanation of Americans for their reluctance to act against these terrorist groups. We are also surprised that Americans were unwilling to let the Turkish armed forces to enter into border regions of Iraq to prevent infiltration of terrorists from Iraq to Turkey. Before the American intervention we were sending troops as necessary to combat these terrorists with our all means since, for obvious reasons, Iraqi army was not in a position to protect the Iraqi side of the border.

A second problem we faced was the reluctance of some allied countries to provide support to Turkey like sending Patriot missile defense systems, prior to the American military intervention in Iraq. At least one of the member countries pursued its negative attitude until the end, preventing the remaining countries to take a decision in DPC and not in the NATO Council to provide Turkey such assistance.

The third problem emerged during the Kosovo operation. Turkish aircraft which were assigned to NATO operations should fly not over Greece to join their base in Aviano, Italy, but over high seas in the Mediterranean because of the rejection of the Greek government an over-flight right to these Turkish aircraft.

All these examples show that after the end of the Cold War, all the problems NATO is facing is not only related to the lack of capabilities to combat new threats but also a lack of solidarity, when the security of some other countries like Turkey is at stake.

Another problem that we are facing is about the new American strategy. We consider America as an important ally, and we are convinced that we have strong common interest, which requires a close cooperation with Americans. It does not mean that we should always agree with American defense policies neglecting our own basic policies and strategic interests. For example the Turkish Parliament has not permitted the invitation of American troops to turkey to open a front against Iraq because our constitution permits the invitation of foreign troops only in case of international legitimacy. Furthermore, we do not agree with this new American strategy of “preemptive strike” which allows American troops to third countries without being attacked herself.

As regards to European Union we are not in principle against the new security and defense dimension of the EU adopted in Maastricht and materialized after St. Malo Declaration between President Chirac and Prime minister Tony Blair. Bu we believe that EU’s defense and security related activities should be conducted in full cooperation with NATO as envisaged in NATO’s Washington Summit in 1999. It took us a few years to reach to a common understanding between these two organizations particularly as regards to the participation of non-EU NATO countries to EU-led operations. Actually, we are satisfied with our participation to EU operations in Bosnia and in Macedonia. We hope that in the future NATO-EU relations will be conducted in full harmony and solidarity not only in the area of peacekeeping operations or crisis management, but also in areas like combating international terrorism.

In short, we don’t see our defense cooperation with the US and EU as issues difficult to reconcile, but at the same time, we expect a full support a full support and solidarity when Turkish security interest so require.

Thank you.